The race for the Fifth Congressional District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives is now considered one of the most competitive races in Virginia. J. Miles Coleman at UVA’s Center for Politics also says one of the candidates, Democrat Dr. Cameron Webb, has been moving toward the center. “Something that’s sort of rare, in his ads, he’ll really try to frame himself as a business-friendly type of Democrat, which is not something you normally see,” he said.
Fringe candidates with unusual beliefs can be found in every election, of course, but this cohort of QAnon followers on the ballot is somewhat unique. “People with crazy beliefs run for Congress all the time, it’s just a question of whether there’s a unifying force among candidates of their crazy beliefs,” said Kyle Kondik, the managing editor at Sabato’s Crystal Ball at UVA’s Center for Politics.
“In all likelihood, Senate control may come down to Iowa and North Carolina,” said Kyle Kondik, an analyst at UVA’S Center for Politics.
Biden's campaign and groups backing him have collected $101 million from donors in the financial, insurance and real estate industries, according to data from the CRP, a nonpartisan research group. That compares with $59.9 million in industry donations for Trump and groups backing him. "Minorities, women and younger employees are pushing for a new direction" on Wall Street, Larry Sabato, a UVA politics professor who also runs the University's Center for Politics, said.
Experts believed that Biden’s chances of victory in these areas were slim. However, his team are now feeling confident, and, as things currently stand in the national polls, Trump is still ahead of Biden in Georgia, but his lead is little more than 0.4%, whilst Biden holds a slender lead in Iowa – with an advantage of 1.4%. “It is an acknowledgment from the Biden campaign that they think they can win those states,” Kyle Kondik from UVA’s Center for Politics said. “Ultimately the candidate’s time is their most valuable resource, and sending [Biden] to Georgia and Iowa is a recognition that they...
Political analysts say they are more certain about polls this year because the public appears to be much more certain about their vote. "The polls are much more reminiscent of 2012, when there was an incumbent on the ballot and the electorate was much more decided," UVA political analyst Kyle Kondik said. "And since there are fewer undecided voters, Biden is more consistently hitting above 50% support. And to me, that is a higher-quality lead than Clinton's was because it suggests Biden has majority support."
For Biden to understand why Unite the Right happened in Charlottesville goes beyond just the statues, UVA professor Jalane Schmidt said. She noted the connection between Charlottesville’s racist past, President Donald Trump’s rhetoric during his last campaign, and the growing rise of white supremacy and neo-Nazism from fringe into mainstream in recent years.
Douglas Laycock, a preeminent church-state scholar and UVA law professor, argues in an amicus brief for the Christian Legal Society and other groups that Smith should be overruled. “Free exercise without exemptions … fails to avert the historic evils that religious liberty is meant to avert: coercion of conscience, suffering for one’s faith, and social conflict,” Laycock wrote.
Jalane Schmidt, an associate professor at the University of Virginia, said the Virginia Flaggers represent a fading ideology, even if they follow through with pledges to add flags elsewhere. “It’s like mushrooms. It’ll probably just pop up somewhere else. This is how they do it,” Schmidt said. “The thing is, what’s happening with this cultural change in Virginia – the former capital of the confederacy – is fewer and fewer people are on board with valorizing the Lost Cause.”
According to research published Wednesday in the journal Lighting Research & Technology, billboards, stadiums, and parking lots are all wasting tons of energy – amounting to $3 billion annually across the U.S. – on excessive, poorly-managed lighting. These lights block out the stars, contribute to climate change, and even throw migrating animals off of their course. “We waste tremendous resources on light that goes out into space and doesn’t do anyone any good,” UVA astronomer Kelsey Johnson, who didn’t work on the project, said.
In one sense, it’s not surprising that Americans don’t know much about how hegemony shapes other countries’ politics and societies. As UVA political scientist Brantly Womack explains in his book, “Asymmetry and International Relations,” hegemonic powers like the United States have the privilege of treating their relations with weaker countries more or less as hobbies simply because there’s rarely much at stake for them.
Dr. Taison Bell, assistant professor of medicine in the divisions of infectious disease and pulmonary/critical care medicine at the University of Virginia, joins Yahoo Finance’s Kristin Myers to discuss the recent COVID-19 case spikes.
As fall and winter roll around, colder weather in those states could also be driving people indoors in close proximity to one another. Dr. Bill Petri, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and International Health at the University of Virginia, said indoor spaces are "more dangerous" and increase risk of airborne infection.
(Analysis by Kyle Kondik, political analyst at UVA’s Center for Politics and the managing editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball) Per Crystal Ball tradition, we are going to release our final ratings for the 2020 election on Monday. That includes picking all of the Toss-ups. Well, perhaps not quite all of them. Today we’re shifting both of Georgia’s Senate elections from Leans Republican to Toss-up.
Breast Cancer Awareness Month isn’t over just yet, and one fitness studio in Charlottesville is trying to raise money for research and treatment through cycling. Zoom held its Tapbacks for Tatas fundraiser all day Thursday to raise money and awareness to benefit the University of Virginia’s mobile mammography unit.
Most laws that are subjected to such a test – lawyers refer to this rigorous level of constitutional analysis as “strict scrutiny” – are struck down. Yet, while the Court used three loaded words in Sherbert, the judiciary applied something much less rigorous than strict scrutiny in cases involving religious objectors. A 1992 study by James E. Ryan, now the president of the University of Virginia, found that federal courts of appeals heard 97 free exercise cases applying the “compelling interest” test between 1980 and 1990, and those courts rejected 85 of these cases.
A study by professors at UVA’s McIntire School of Commerce found that in a month when a conservative user visited Facebook more than usual, they read news that was about 30% more conservative than the online news they usually read. By contrast, when a typical conservative used Reddit more than usual, they read news that was about 50% more moderate than what they typically read.
A Charlottesville-area pumpkin carver is helping one of the University of Virginia libraries get into the spirit of Halloween. The Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library is now home to some carvings by Ed Morton, an experienced pumpkin carver.
UVA Sustainability Director Andrea Ruedy Trimble says the University is making its efforts in conjunction with Charlottesville and Albemarle County as part of their Climate Action Together partnership. The University made a goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2030 and free of fossil fuels by 2050.
"These forests can be some of the only really clear signs we can see on the landscape of the salt water coming in," says Cora Johnston Baird, director of UVA’s Coastal Research Center. Baird helped design the collaborative “Ghosts of the Coast.” She says it’s part botany lesson, part field study, part revelation.